A lot of people do put a lot of stock in prophecy, including prophecies of the end of the world that nobody ever made (such as the one not made for today by the Mayans, through their calendar) and others that people made but were wrong (such as those made by Harold Camping last year and by many throughout history who preceded him.) If anyone were any good at prophecy they’d be able to use their special knowledge to become billionaires, so maybe we should be watching Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg and the Koch brothers and people like that. I haven’t heard any rumors of them building bunkers or spaceships yet. Of course at the end of the year they may get a small tax hike, but that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

The Large Hadron Collider [LHC], meanwhile, has triumphantly reached the end of its first run of proton-proton collisions. Goal #1 of the LHC was to allow physicists at the ATLAS and CMS experiments to discover the Higgs particle, or particles, or whatever took their place in nature; and it would appear that, in a smashing success, they have co-discovered one. But no Higgs particles, or anything like them, will be produced again until 2015. Although the LHC will run for a short while in early 2013, it will do so in a different mode, smashing not protons but the nuclei of lead atoms together, in order to study the properties of extremely hot and dense matter, under conditions the universe hasn’t seen since the earliest stages of the Big Bang that launched the current era of our universe. Then it will be closed down for repairs and upgrades. So until 2015, any additional information we’re going to learn about the Higgs particle, or any other unknown particle that might have been produced at the LHC, is going to be obtained by analyzing the data that has been collected in 2011 and 2012. The total amount of data is huge; what was collected in 2012 was about 4.5 times as much as in 2011, and it was taken at 8 TeV of energy per proton-proton collision rather than 7 TeV as in 2011. I can assure you there will be many new things learned from analyzing that data throughout 2013 and 2014.

Of course a lot of people prophesied confidently that we’d discover supersymmetry, or something else dramatic, very early on at the LHC. Boy, were they wrong! Those of us who were cautioning against such optimistic statements are not sure whether to laugh or cry, because of course it would have been great to have such a discovery early in the LHC program. But there was ample reason to believe (despite what other bloggers sometimes say) that even if supersymmetry exists and is accessible to the LHC experiments, discovering it could take a lot longer than just two years! For instance, see this paper written in 2006 pointing out that the search strategies being planned for seeking supersymmetry might fail in the presence of a few extra lightweight particles not predicted in the minimal variants of supersymmetry. As far as I can tell at present, this very big loophole has only partly been closed by the LHC studies done up to now. The same loophole applies for other speculative ideas, including certain variants of LHC-accessible extra dimensions. I am hopeful that these loopholes can be closed in 2013 and 2014, with additional analysis on the current data, but until they are, you should be very cautious believing those who claim that reasonable variants of LHC-accessible supersymmetry (meaning “natural variants of supersymmetry that resolve the hierarchy problem”) are ruled out by the LHC experiments. It’s just not true. Not yet. The only classes of theories that have been almost thoroughly ruled out by LHC data are those predict on general grounds that there should be no observable Higgs particle at all (e.g. classic technicolor).

Now, the prophecy I’d like to make, but cannot — because I do not have any special insight into the answer — is on the question of whether the LHC will make great new discoveries in the future, or whether the LHC has already made its last discovery: a Higgs particle of Standard Model type. Even if the latter is the case, we will need years of data from the LHC in order to distinguish these two possibilities; there’s no way for us to guess. It’s clear that Nature’s holding secrets from us. We know the Standard Model (the equations we use to describe all the known particles and forces) is not a complete theory of nature, because it doesn’t explain things like dark matter (hey, were dark matter particles perhaps discovered in 2012?), and it doesn’t tell us why, for example, there are six types of quarks, or why the heaviest quark has a mass that is more than 10,000 times larger than the mass of the lightest quarks, etc. What we don’t know is whether the answers to those secrets are accessible to the LHC; does it have enough energy per collision, and enough collisions, for the job? The only way to find out is to run the LHC, and to dig thoroughly through its data for any sign of anything amiss with the predictions of the Standard Model. This is very hard work, and it will take the rest of the decade (but not until the end of the world.)

In the meantime, please do not fret about the quiet in the tunnel outside Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC will be back, bigger and better (well, at least with more energy per collision) in 2015. And while we wait during the two year shutdown, the experimentalists at ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb will be hard at work, producing many new results from the 2011 and 2012 proton collision data! Even the experiments CDF and DZero from the terminated Tevatron are still writing new papers. In short, fear not: not only isn’t the December solstice of 2012 the end of the world, it doesn’t even signal a temporary stop to the news about the Higgs particle!

31 responses to “It’s (not) The End of the World”

I am going to take the Mayans side. Even Townhall states they are wrong. You see TIME will stop, they just missed the date. Now lets see about physics. General Relativity, wrong; Quantum Mechanics, wrong; Expansion, wrong; Dark Matter, wrong; Multiverses, wrong. Given that, if you have a degree in Physics, you should ask for your tuition back. Why ? Time is discrete , not continuous. Even the Mayans missed that. Prophesy: In 40 years this will all be corrected. No need to reply, every one is sure this is wrong.

Actually there are physics theories that attempt to quantize time. We haven’t been able to detect it (can’t measure time scales short enough yet,) but it seems likely (To me, a non-physicist, and some, but not all, physicists,) that a “Grand Unified Theory” will require quantization of space-time.

Now, people will be sure you are wrong because of your flippant tone and your lack of evidence for your dismissal of very successful theories. Sure, we know quantum mechanics and general relativity are incompatible, and thus incomplete, but they’re both fantastically accurate. Any complete theory will have to reduce to them at the scales we can measure (just as Relativity reduces to Newtonian mechanics in many conditions.) “Wrong” is thus a misleading term.

Also, if the Mayans were so good at seeing the future, why didn’t they prepare for the coming of the Spanish? Likewise with every other “wisdom of the ancients” philosophy: If the ancients were so wise, why are they all dead and their civilizations gone?

I feel the scientific mindset is very important. You seem to think you have the answers already. I know I don’t have the answers, and I have reason to think no one else does either. But I’ll keep looking at the evidence, and the reasoning of others who look at the evidence, and hope to eventually find more of the answers. To me the concept of a world with nothing left to discover is disturbing, it’s far more comforting to be able to wonder at the vastness and complexity of the unknown than to sit in smug assurance that all is known.

I confess to not reading this article all the way through because I am in Spain with a very sick friend. But I did want to point out a trivial error in the part that I did read – the man who predicted the end of the world last year was Harold Camping, not Howard Camping.

I personally found the measurement by LHCb of the small branching ratio of the Bs to two muons also a mayor event in 2012.
Talking of which: does anyone know the EXPERIMENTAL value (plus reference) of the decay rate of the 2p -> 1s transition in hydrogen. I get the impression it has never been measured, at least I can’t find it anywhere on the internet. Thanks in advance.

I just do not understand why people are so excited by the fact that LHCb found a small branching ratio for Bs to two muons.

If they had found a big branching ratio, that would have been hugely exciting, because that would have told us the Standard Model is wrong.

But finding a small branching ratio, as is true both for the Standard Model and for many other speculative theories, does NOT (despite all the press reports and mistaken blog articles) tell you that supersymmetry is ruled out. Absolute rubbish. You can just look at the formulas for the supersymmetry prediction for this process yourself, and you’ll see — it’s rubbish. I confirmed this with a theorist who specializes in this type of measurement. You can see that there is lots of room left for supersymmetry after this measurement in http://profmattstrassler.com/2012/11/16/remember-that-blow-to-supersymmetry-and-other-theories/

The Higgs mass of 125 GeV/c^2 is MUCH more important in constraining supersymmetry. Entire classes of supersymmetric models are inconsistent with this number.

And the most important measurements of all are the absence of any signs of new particles other than the Higgs. However, exactly which sets of supersymmetric variants are excluded by the non-observation of superpartner particles is still being worked out at this time (and it is very complicated work). It’s also a moving target, since much more will be done throughout 2013 with the current data set. The same is true for other speculative theories.

It tells us that the Standard Model is all we need up to that level, that’s why I’m so excited! I don’t want to see a glimpse of some new theory with even more free parameters that is not able to explain why there are three generations of quark and leptons. I prefer the Standard Model up to around the Planck scale. Just a personal preference (and expectation), nothing more. Because my prophesy is that the Standard Model will never be replaced by anything else by the human race. So for me 2012 has been a great year.

Well, Marcel — if you read this blog carefully, you’ll see your excitement is misplaced. Indeed, even if you read my previous comment.

The LHCb measurement is also what would occur in MANY MANY MANY MANY theories that are not the Standard Model. It is a good way to discover new phenomena; it is not a very good way to rule out new phenomena. It gives very little evidence in favor of the Standard Model.

By contrast, the absence of discoveries in the now vast array of the ATLAS and CMS measurements gives MUCH STRONGER (but still relatively weak) evidence in favor of the Standard Model, because MANY MANY MANY MANY variants of many different theories would have shown up by now.

You’re putting way too much weight on the LHCb measurement, which is rather weak (though important), and far too little on all the measurements that were done by others.

In any case, if the current situation makes you happy, fine with me. I don’t really get happy or unhappy about such things, as long as we learn the correct answers and aren’t led by our biases into making an error in interpreting or analyzing data.

“as long as we learn the correct answers and aren’t led by our biases into making an error in interpreting or analyzing data.” I absolutely agree with that and it can’t be repeated enough! That’s why I want the EXPERIMENTAL value of the decay rate of the 2p->1s transition in hydrogen to check the outcome of a standard quantum mechanical calculation everybody says agrees so well with experiment :-)

I apologize for raising a question off-topic, and perhaps it’s a silly one at that. My question is: If it was possible to cool particles to absolute zero such that they would be in a state of suspended animation, would they no longer move through space and no longer be able to acquire mass from the Higgs field? If this is true, then wouldn’t that make a particle that would otherwise have mass massless? Thank you sir.

A particle does not need to move through space to gain mass from the Higgs field. Think of the Earth’s gravitational field, we feel gravity constantly, even when not moving. The same is true of other fields like air pressure.

A particle cooled to absolute zero (An impossible task.) still moves; this is due to the uncertainty principle, which states we can never know the speed and the location of an object exactly. (A particle not moving at all and thus in one spot exactly would have both its position and speed known exactly.) Thus particles still jiggle at zero kelvin. For helium this jiggling is enough to keep it a liquid no matter how cold it gets.

thanks for this nice end of the year article summarizing the particle physis year 2012 :-)

Can you say a bit more about what this hidden valley sector is, how it expands the minimal supersymmetry variants (I know only a little bit about the MSSM). Is this just a random ad hoc expansion or is it derived from some higher energy theory?

One last silly question. Perhaps I should study physics rather than ask, but here it is: What is the relationship between the Higgs field effect on a particle and one that is acquiring more mass as it approaches the speed of light. Thank you sir.

‘ If anyone were any good at prophesy’ should read ‘ If anyone were any good at prophecy'; unless my using English spelling misleads me, the first is the act of predicting while the second is the practice of prediction itself. Of course this is a minor point, it’s not the end of the world or anything.

“This image maps the temperature of the radiation left over from the Big Bang, at a time when the universe was only 375,000 years old. It shows a temperature range of plus-or-minus 200 microKelvin, with fluctuations in the so-called cosmic microwave background radiation appearing here as color differences.” … Space.com

+/- 200 micro Kelvin at T = 375,000 years?

1. Does this rapid decrease in temperature suggests that the rate (speed) of expansion of space-time due to the Big Bang far exceeded the universal constant speed of light?

2. Or maybe the Big Bang theory is just invalid?

“Among other revelations, the data from WMAP revealed a much more precise estimate for the age of the universe — 13.7 billion years — and confirmed that about 95 percent of it is composed of mind-boggling stuff called dark matter and dark energy. WMAP data also helped scientists nail down the curvature of space to within 0.4 percent of “flat,” and pinpoint the time when the universe began to emerge from the cosmic dark ages (about 400 million years after the Big Bang.)” … Space.com

3. Flat? … Could we be looking at the “horizon” of the spherical (closed) universe and mistaken it as flat. Remember we made the same mistake about the Earth being flat as well, because we could not see past the horizon.

4. As far as the idea that if it was closed we should be able to see the back of our heads, well not if space-time was expanding faster the speed of light.

1) I wasn’t referring to you (as should be obvious if you read closely.) I was referring to informal proof-readers, not to standard readers like yourself.

2) You do not do a writer any favors by failing to point out even minor errors. Editing is generally appreciated. It is extremely difficult, when writing several thousand words a week, to avoid errors, and no one gains if errors remain in the text.

Actually, Harold Camping did use his prophesy to make lots of money — by convincing thousands of people to donate money to him and his radio program by convincing them that the world would end so their earthly posessions were of no value (some gullible ppl actually sold their house and everything and gave it to him).

WMAP Team Releases Final Results, Based on Nine Years of Observations:
WMAP observations also support an add-on to the big bang framework to account for the earliest moments of the universe. Called “inflation,” the theory says that the universe underwent a dramatic early period of expansion, growing by more than a trillion trillion-fold in less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. Tiny fluctuations were generated during this expansion that eventually grew to form galaxies.
Remarkably, WMAP’s precision measurement of the properties of the fluctuations has confirmed specific predictions of the simplest version of inflation: the fluctuations follow a bell curve with the same properties across the sky, and there are equal numbers of hot and cold spots on the map. WMAP also confirms the predictions that the amplitude of the variations in the density of the universe on big scales should be slightly larger than smaller scales, and that the universe should obey the rules of Euclidean geometry so the sum of the interior angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees- ie… the universe is three dimensional.

Where there is matter, there is dark matter, that has gravity but does not emit any light. So light(photons) also locked inside closed system of dark matter(during inflation)- like, Gold stone bosons locked inside matter, creating rest mass?

Higgs boson(h) create graviton at lower energy level, outside the closed system of matter(for a while). We cannot differentiate this with Neutrino oscillation- while it behave as Higgs boson of dark matter, acquire it mass from “dark energy”- thus neutralizing the effect of expansion of the space, from matter explosion?.
Analogy: When baking a cake, the distance between raisins go apart. If raisins were replaced by small stones, will be more intact(matter not the space) during baking(from acceleration of the expansion of the universe)???

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A Higgs particle is produced in a proton-proton collision at center, and decays to two photons (particles of light, indicated by green towers) in an LHC detector. Tracks emerging from center are from remnants of the two protons.